Porter Recipe Critique please

Ok be easy...instead of me flipping through the pages on here, my brewing book, podcasts etc. (which I did for this recipe as well) and doing 5 gallons of a recipe that may work, I figured I'll post my recipe before I brew it and only brew a half batch. I like "putting together" my own recipes for the adventure (my two recent ones have been complete adventures in learning) but I want good results with this one. Looking for a nice balanced coffee, "chocolate" flavor.

Extract:
2.5 gallon boil and batch

3.0 lbs Light DME
.25lbs Crystal 80L
.25lbs Chocolate Malt
.15lbs Black patent


.5 Brambling Cross at 45 mins
.25 " at 15 mins
.25 " at 5 mins

wlp002

Steep the grains at 155* 25 minutes then 60 minute boil for the rest.

May throw in a vanilla bean after primary.

I put it into Tasty Brew calcuators (any brewing software for Mac? WTF?)and everything came out within the specified ranges.

Did the above recipe except with brambling cross hops and it has turned out more like a Newcastle Brown Ale

anyone? anything?

If you do the AG, consider using Pale Ale Malt or Maris Otter instead of 2-row, to add a stronger malty backbone to the beer. I'd go with the English yeast on this one, just to leave a little residual sweetness, which is nice in a porter. I'm drinking a porter I fermented with English Yeast, and it turned out really nicely.

I think the recipe looks good. Brew it up. If it's good, post this in the recipe section (if you don't see a similar version already).

You probably want some roasted barley in there. I would say get rid of the chocolate malt (that is more traditionally in stouts) up the black patent a little and add some roasted barley. the former will help with some of the coffee notes and the latter with the (somewhat necessary) roastiness.

One of the biggest differences between porter and stout, it seems, is the difference between using chocolate malt or black patent... but both use roasted barley...

oberon567 said:

You probably want some roasted barley in there. I would say get rid of the chocolate malt (that is more traditionally in stouts) up the black patent a little and add some roasted barley. the former will help with some of the coffee notes and the latter with the (somewhat necessary) roastiness.

One of the biggest differences between porter and stout, it seems, is the difference between using chocolate malt or black patent... but both use roasted barley...

Click to expand...

I disagree. I use chocolate malt quite a bit. Sometimes it may just be a couple of ounces to get the color where I want it, but in a porter (if this is an attempt at a Robust Porter), I think it's almost mandatory.

You could certainly make a good porter without chocolate malt, but I tend to do the opposite. My porters get chocolate and my stouts get roasted barley. Black patent is acceptable in either.

I tend to agree ohiobrewtus on this one.

I'll further add these 2 things:
1) Using 10% chocolate malt in a grain bill gives a very distinct coffee flavor.
2) Some brewing purist claim the real difference between a porter and stout is that a stout uses roasted barley and a porter doesn't. Also it seems most porter recipes use black patten in the way stouts use roasted barley, but that part is only my observation.

Schlante,
Phillip

MVKTR2 said:

I tend to agree ohiobrewtus on this one.

I'll further add these 2 things:
1) Using 10% chocolate malt in a grain bill gives a very distinct coffee flavor.
2) Some brewing purist claim the real difference between a porter and stout is that a stout uses roasted barley and a porter doesn't. Also it seems most porter recipes use black patten in the way stouts use roasted barley, but that part is only my observation.

Schlante,
Phillip

Click to expand...

+1 Don't sub the chocolate or black patent for roasted barley. If you do, you'll be making a stout, not a porter.

I guess I will have to concede...

This is advice I had been told when I was planning a RIS recipe on this forum... but looking through some of Jamil Z.'s recipes, I can see I am confusing my grains... here iis his grain bill for his Robust Porter and his Dry Stour, to see the difference:
Robust Porter
73.0% 11.50 lbs. Pale Malt(2-row) America 1.048
09.5% 1.50 lbs. Munich Malt(2-row) America 1.006
09.5% 1.50 lbs. Crystal 40L America 1.006
03.2% 0.50 lbs. Black Patent Malt America 1.002
04.8% 0.75 lbs. Chocolate Malt America 1.003
Dry Stout
70.0% 7.00 lbs. Pale Malt Halcyon Great Britain 1.038
20.0% 2.00 lbs. Flaked Barley America 1.032
10.0% 1.00 lbs. Roasted Barley America 1.028

I found Bramling Cross whole hops instead...seemed like a good match with the description at the store, I think I hope?

Looking further into it I hope I didn't miss the mark with this hop decision. Some descriptions make it sound perfect (fruity, well rounded, use for any english ale) then other make it sound not so good, almost pale ale type hop (grapefruity, citrusy).

anyone?

oberon567 said:

You probably want some roasted barley in there. I would say get rid of the chocolate malt (that is more traditionally in stouts) up the black patent a little and add some roasted barley. the former will help with some of the coffee notes and the latter with the (somewhat necessary) roastiness.

One of the biggest differences between porter and stout, it seems, is the difference between using chocolate malt or black patent... but both use roasted barley...

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, this is 180 degrees out of phase, as was pointed out. In my book, your advice would be fine if it was roasted barley being subbed for black patent.

The recipe looks good. I'd brew it!

Bob

adamjab19 said:

I found Bramling Cross whole hops instead...seemed like a good match with the description at the store, I think I hope?

Looking further into it I hope I didn't miss the mark with this hop decision. Some descriptions make it sound perfect (fruity, well rounded, use for any english ale) then other make it sound not so good, almost pale ale type hop (grapefruity, citrusy).

anyone?

Click to expand...

EdWort's porter recipe uses cascade and it's GREAT. I've also had a wonderful chocolate stout hopped completely with cascade. You'd be surprised how those kinds of hops blend well with these dark beers. I'd go with those hops and not worry about it.

Thank you. I'll keep everyone updated.

Three weeks now in primary. I have though what looks like turb on the top floating around. The rest of beer looks clear. Not that I am worried about infection, just have never seen actual fermentation; first time using a glass carboy. I'll just syphon around it. Going to drop in a vanilla been on Thursday and let that sit for about 10 days and then bottle.

Bottled this tonight. Threw in a half vanilla bean scrapped 10 days ago. (does not have any vanilla flavor BTW)I have no idea what happened, but the recipe as follows in the first post turned into a brown ale type thing, almost a Newcastle clone. As stated I like the adventure of creating my own recipes but everything was pointing for this beer to be tar black and coffee like, WTF? I mean I love Newcastle so that's cool, but did my calculators fail me? Everything fell right in the middle of robust porter specifications. Can you lose color somehow? Can you extract not enough color from specialty grains? I guess human error and maybe I measured the grains wrong at the shop....

adamjab19 said:

I put it into Tasty Brew calcuators (any brewing software for Mac? WTF?)

Click to expand...

Looking for something "up to date" I find these:

Homebrew Formulator 2.7.5 software download - Mac OS X - VersionTracker

Glowing reviews, freeware, but download link does not work. Sigh. Developer orphaned it, I guess.

This site seems to work for it?

Homebrew Formulator 2.7.5 - MacUpdate

Sounds like it's done the way I'd do it, more or less.

Kent Place Software - The Home Of BeerAlchemy Homebrewing Software

Payware. Not sure how good it is, but it claims to have a demo mode.


What I've actually used, not overly detailed, OS9 era: Brewer's notebook. Limited, but not useless.

Got a porter in secondary right now. I targeted just above the high range for a robust porter and it's doing quite well. My advice? Next time up the black patent and throw in some Munich, and maybe try a darker crystal malt.